22. Matthew 13: Parables of the Kingdom (2)
The Wheat and the
Weeds and Its Explanation (Mt.13:24-30; 36-43)
Jesus offers another parable of the
kingdom. This one is split into the parable proper (vv.24-30) and its
interpretation (vv.36-41) in between which are two more parables of the kingdom
(vv.31-33) and another explanation of Jesus’ use of parables (vv.34-35).
Jesus’ parable compares the kingdom
of heaven to one who sows wheat in a field. While everyone slept an enemy sowed
weeds in that field. When the field grew
both wheat and the weeds together filled the field. The owners’ slaves asked
him if he wanted them to de-weed the field of the enemy’s work. The owner
declines fearing some wheat would be cleared out with the weeds. Wait until
harvest time, he instructs them, then the two can be separated, the weeds for
destruction, and the wheat for storage and later use.
The question about the proper
understanding of this parable has to do with the timing of the harvest Jesus
talks about in it.[1]
-usually it is taken as Jesus’ return at the end of the age
for final judgment. The world till then will be a mixed company of wheat and
weeds, even in the church. A final separation will be made at the very end. In
that the state of the world and the church is, has, and always will be a “mixed
multitude” of believers and unbelievers this view has a prima facie
plausibility.
-Jesus’s use of harvest imagery, however, speaks of a
different time frame. In 9:37-38. Next in ch.10 he sends the harvesters out
into Israel to continue his work of separating the wheat from the weeds and
gather the wheat into a new community. Is it possible that Jesus’ earthly
ministry is the harvest time his parable speaks of?
-Jesus’ parable in Mt.21 of the owner of a vineyard has the
owner’s son coming his tenants last of all after other messengers sent to
collect the owner’s harvest from them have been rejected and abused. After the
son is killed a crushing judgment follows with the original tenants killed and
the vineyard given over to other tenants. This is judgment on Israel resulting
from its rejection of Jesus as the true Messiah. It is this “harvest,” I
believe, Jesus speaks about in this parable in Mt.13.
In the explanation of the parable
Jesus gives at the disciples’ request, he identifies himself as the “Son of
Man” from Dan.7, the sower of the wheat (v.37). So immediately we are in Jesus’
earthly ministry. The field is the “world” (v.38). This is not the promised
land, as we might expect if the setting I have proposed for the parable is
correct. However, we have already seen in the birth story that Matthew has
typologically identified Israel as Egypt! Further, the people returned from
exile to the land were still under the conditions of exile. Further yet, the people
of Israel remaining in Babylon or dispersed throughout the world are also
inhabitants of the “world.” Among them are also “good seed,” Israelites who
remain faithful to their God in a foreign land. All these are the work of the
Son of Man. In effect, there is no “land,” at this point, all is the world. And
Jesus’ ministry is the regather the faithful from among this world “at the end
of the age” (v.40) when God acts to reassert his rightful rule of the
rebellious nations of the world (among which Israel must be included).
“Jesus’ good news is: Now is the judgment of this world; now
is the prince of this world cast out – along with the weeds that he sowed. The
Lord left the wheat and weeds to grow up side-by-side until the harvest, that
is, until Jesus comes. Now Jesus and His apostles will separate the wheat from
the tares, gathering the wheat and leaving the weeds to be burned in fire. Now,
at the end of the age, the Son of Man will send His angels into the world to
gather the wheat and burn the chaff. There is a judgment coming on the wheat
field, Israel scattered throughout the world, and this judgment is going to
separate wheat and tares.”[2]
“All causes of sin and all
evildoers” (v.41) will be banished in this judgment. That sounds like what we
usually call the final judgment doesn’t it? It does, to be sure. In this 1st
century setting, however, I believe it means that God’s coming in Jesus to
regather all of Israel who will and bring into judgment all who would not will
divide and do away with all in Israel that would not accept Jesus as the true
Israel and follow his way and instead clung instead to Sadducean, Pharisaic,
Essene, or Zealot ways of being Israel (“causes of sin” and “evildoers”).
This is what constitutes the “end
of the age” when God allowed the rebellious nations to rule the rule. Or the
first stage of it at any rate. The stage brought to an end by the destruction
of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in 70 a.d.
Matthew’s citation of Dan.12:2-3, “righteous will shine like the sun in
the kingdom of their Father,” tells us we’re on the right track here. Dan.7-12
describes exactly what we find in this parable. In Daniel the Jew are under
tremendous pressure from the Seleucid rulers, particularly Antiochus IV. His
virulent passion to Hellenize the region meant systematic attempts to efface
Jewish identity and faith. The resurrection of the “wise” to “shine like the
sun” describes those who faithfully resisted this forced Hellenization while
those who did not will rise to “shame and everlasting contempt.” These are
analogous to the parable’s “sons of the kingdom” and the “sons of the evil one.”[3]
I believe this understanding makes better historical and
theological sense of this passage than the usual “end times” reading. And while
this is historically limited reading may better reflect the intended sense, it
still offers extended insight into the world we will in. For our world too is a
mixed lot of “(children) of the kingdom” and “children of the evil one.” We too
face a resurrection and final judgment based on how we responded to God’s call
to be part of the historical movement of God’s people. And the issue remains
faithfulness in the face of conflict intended to deflect our obedience to God’s
will and way. Yet it remains crucial to understand the historical setting I’ve
laid out because it is (I believe) the true setting for the teaching here and
because we have almost no understanding of this setting and what it means for
the unfolding purpose of God.
Two More Parables of the Kingdom (Mt.13:31-33)
The first of these parables compares the kingdom of heaven to
a mustard seed. This latter was in Jesus’ day (if not in ours) considered the
“smallest of all the seeds” (v.32). This is not a deliberate error on Jesus’
part just a limitation of knowledge in the culture of his time. But when Jesus
calls the growth of this seed a “tree” that can host birds in its branches, he
is deliberately creating a contrast between that tree and the mustard seed
shrub (8-10 ft. maximum). And this contrast is the key to the parable.
Sown by “someone” (v.31; likely a circumlocution for “God”)
in their field (probably the same as the field in the wheat and weeds parable –
the world). God sows his tiny people among his rebellious world and it ends up
a giant tree providing shade and home for the birds (often a symbol for the
nations of the world). But this tree is to all appearances but a decent-sized
shrub not capable of housing the birds of the air. What’s going on here?
Well, obviously things are not as they appear – by intention.
David Garland calls this “a parody of itself.”[4]
The great world-hosting tree is in reality but a bushy shrub! The upside-down
reality of God’s kingdom. It is “why the kingdom is a mystery. This is why
some people cannot understand. The hidden meaning of Israel’s history, the
meaning that Jesus brings to fruition, is that the cosmic tree of the world is
not the great, spreading imperial tree of Rome, but the small, despised,
bushy-tree of Israel.”[5]
We can see this upside-down mustard
seed reality in
-Jesus, a Galilean peasant from an obscure
backwater village who dies accused a traitor on a Roman cross.
-the Jerusalem temple-palace – unimpressive
among the great temples and palaces of its world.
-Mt. Zion, barely more than a large hill.
This Jesus
and the kingdom of heaven he heralds subverts the expectations of his opponents
and his disciples (and is modern day disciples too!) about size, status, and
influence. The historical era we call Christendom, the dying embers of which
still smolder in America, where the church was a large, accepted and acceptable,
player in the culture and wielder of influence, seems far from Jesus’ parable
here.
It might
be appropriate at this point for a brief reflection on the problems with this
Constantinian temptation and why it is theologically problematic and why we
should not mourn its passing. Darrin W. Snyder Belousek offers this
cogent critique which will form a nice segue into the parable of the leaven:
\“First, Constantinianism points toward a corrupted form of
the church: if Christ can be embodied in a particular political order, then the
politeia (political community) can supplant the ekklesia (church community) as
the unique sacrament in and through which the soma Christou (body of Christ) is
fully present in history (cf. Ephesians 1).
“Second, Constantinianism suggests a deviant doctrine of
salvation: if Christ can be embodied in a particular political order, then we
can make salvation for ourselves through works by the accomplishments of our
activism or by identifying with our causes rather than receive salvation from
God through faith by the grace and peace of the cross (cf. Ephesians 2).
“Third, Constantinianism leads to a confused mode of
mission: if Christ can be embodied in a particular political order, then the
church can fulfill its commission to make known ‘the wisdom of God’ by
promoting our “agenda for America” rather than proclaiming ‘the mystery of
Christ’ revealed through the gospel (cf. Ephesians 3).
“Ultimately, Constantinianism requires an erroneous doctrine
of Christ. In the 4th C. Christological debate surrounding the Council of
Nicaea, it was not the “high” Christology of Athanasius (the Son is eternally
begotten of the Father and so ontologically equal with the Father and
ontologically superior to all creation) but rather the “low” Christology of
Arius (the Son is the firstborn of creatures and thus ontologically equal to
creation and ontologically subordinate to the Father) that was amenable to
Constantinianism (the sanctification of the imperial order a la Eusebius).
“If, on the one hand, Christ is “begotten not made” and so
has eternal supremacy over all creation (per the Nicene Creed), then Christ as
Lord stands in judgment over every political order such that no political order
within creation can ever claim to instantiate the reign of Christ. Every
political order within creation necessarily falls short of Christ’s reign
precisely because Christ, though incarnate, is no mere creature—and thus no mere
creature, not even the highest of the “rulers and authorities,” can ever share
the place of Christ as Lord of all. Thus, the “high” Christology of the Nicene
Creed is actually anti-Constantinian at the same time as it is anti-Arian.
“If, on the other hand, we seek to merge the rule of Caesar
with the reign of Christ and so sanctify the rule of Caesar as the will of God
(per Constantinianism), because we cannot credibly elevate Caesar to the status
of Christ (“begotten”), then we must demote Christ to the status of Caesar
(“made”). Thus, the Constantinian project requires that we make Christ a
creature elevated by God to first status in creation under God, parallel to
Caesar a creature elevated by God to second status in creation under Christ, so
that we can then link the throne of Caesar with the throne of Christ. That is,
Constantinian politics requires an Arian Christology.”[6]
It is one thing to subvert by critiquing ideologies of size,
status, and influence, another to infuse them with subversive content which
deconstructs and reconstructs more appropriate views on such matters. And that
where our next parable about leaven or yeast comes in.
Leaven or yeast is often, though not always, something
negative in the Bible. Leithart comments,
“leaven is often a symbol of a dynamic
evil that has to be purged. At the feast of unleavened bread, Israel was to put
away old leaven. The feast of unleavened bread was a new beginning, as Israel
put away the leaven of Egypt, the idolatrous attractions and desires that had
permeated Israel and needed to be plucked out. No leaven was ever put on the
altar, and Jesus in the gospels warns of the leaven of the scribes and
Pharisees. But God works like leaven. He uses despised things to overturn
things that are honored. He uses the “unclean” and the apparently “corrupting”
to leaven the lump of Israel. His prophets were leaven – considered unclean and
dangerous, and subverting established ways of living and worshiping. Jesus is
seen as a dangerously corrupting man, and He is corrupting Israel, if you are a
Pharisee.”[7]
Jesus and
his movement, his kingdom of heaven movement, is God’s leaven or yeast kneaded
into the dough of Israel that it may transform the whole loaf. It does so by “corrupting”
or subverting the ways others in Israel had decided it ought to be the Israel
God wanted. Jesus’ way, so “foreign” to so many in ethnic Israel, divided and
regathered those in Israel who would be the Abrahamic Israel God created it to
be. He was the yeast that made it such. Those who rejected him and his way were
left with only the judgment to come at the hands of Rome.
More About Parables (Mt.13:34-35)
Matthew
again tells us Jesus spoke to the crowds only in parables, these sticks of
dynamite that blow up Israel as it was in the interest of Israel as God wanted
it to be. Here again he claims to be fulfilling the Old Testament, this time
Psa.78. There the psalmist Asaph recounts and interprets Israel’s history for
the people in the hope that they would see and hear, truly see and hear, what
God wanted from them, repent and cease being hard-hearted and rebellious and
become responsive to again to God (vv.2,8)
Again, far
from the innocent little spiritual truths told through homely, earthly stories,
these parables of Jesus are radical stuff, tough stuff, exploding everything
they touch and demanding a rethink of everything Israel was and had become –
and ought to be. Few earlids, it turns out, stayed open long enough to get what
these parables taught.
Faith is
the name of open earlids. And this faith is a demanding call. In a time of
turmoil, emotional, spiritual, and political passions abounding, the faith
Jesus calls for demands, first of all patience. “Yahweh did not tear out the tares
from Israel before the harvest; He planted a tiny seed and waited for it to
grow. A lump of dough is not leavened immediately. God’s kingdom comes slowly,
and if we are going to keep in step with the King and His Spirit, we need to be
patient.”[8]
Secondly,
such faith at “the end of the age” requires that we not trust our senses.[9] Nothing
is as it seems when God begins to turn everything right-side up. Our senses,
long attuned and habituated to seeing, experiencing, and thinking things upside
down, need extensive rehabilitation and retraining to see things right-side up.
Jesus’ parables are therapy for us in this proper seeing.
Patience
and rehabilitation, we need them today as much as those first hearers of Jesus
did. Our Constantinian heritage (see above) has left us with as many hindrances
to hearing and practicing the teaching of these parables as the confusions and
distortions in Israel presented for them. May our earlids remain open and
hearts responsive to this patient reshaping of our imaginations to see and
follow this unconventional and radical Messiah toward becoming the people God wants
us to be in our time and place.
[1] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 267-281.
[2] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 302-306,
[3] Perriman, “The Parable of the Weeds and the Question
0f Hell” at https://www.postost.net/commentary/parable-weeds-question-hell.
[4] David Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and
Theological Commentary (Macon, Ga.: Smyth and Helwys, 2001).
[5] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 352.
[6] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2015/03/17/politicized-christology-in-christianized-politics-constantinianism-of-right-and-left/?fbclid=IwAR2zg27Z-UbDfhhS8fQ0JB-I42qfIK3gt19DA0L9A6NH1ebxswMzLnyaNB8.
[7] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 356-359.
[8] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 371.
[9] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 371.
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